Steal this blog.

Have 2 cents, will share.

2011-05-02T13:57:00.003+05:30

Just the other day, one of my professors, referring to how organizational change is dependent on the passing of generations (among other things), quipped "Things don't change overnight, things change when people die." That little aphorism is morbidly apt for today, the day they announced Osama Bin Laden is dead. OBL was allegedly found and killed near Islamabad in Pakistan, inciting celebrations all over the United States and much of the free world, especially at 'Ground Zero', where the twin towers once stood, proud symbols of America's economic and corporate power. To all those who lost their loved ones on September 11th, 2001, and in the resulting 'War on Terror', the news of OBL's death brings a sense of closure, of justice finally being done. And yet, I see no cause for celebration. All I see is another dead human being, another tragedy to add to the already long list of casualties of life in the 20th century. As one internet-wit puts it, "Lonely, deranged, religious man with kidney disease murdered in Pakistan." It is another matter that the man in question was directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people, but at the end of the day, he was just a man. The organization he led, Al Qaeda, literally means the 'way' or the 'basis', perhaps best translated as 'status quo'. Al Qaeda seeks to do what all fascist regimes have attempted (and failed) to do, to establish total control over an entire population. But history shows us that the will of the people may be suppressed for a while, but it can never be broken. Humans are an adaptable, resilient species, by nature predisposed to exercising our basic freedoms. The recent revolutions in Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Yemen and Bahrain are just the beginning of a global shift in power structures, in the way authority is exercised, and governments serve their people. A better day, and a better way of doing things is on the horizon.

No, I would not celebrate the death of OBL. I would celebrate the death of what he stood for, what all tyrants, all dictatorships, all authoritarian establishments stand for- the culture of hate and mistrust for one's fellow man. I would celebrate the end of ignorance, the end of violence, the end of the commonplace, everyday hatred that seems to reside in every human heart (but really has no place there). And I believe that I won't have to wait much longer.

tl;dr: Things don't change overnight. Things don't change when people die. Things change when people let go of the old ways, and embrace nobler ideals than the ones they are accustomed to. Imagine a better world... then make it so.

Leveraging the zeitgeist

2011-02-17T14:15:00.008+05:30

It's a new age. Information has never been as freely accessible as in our time. The people of my generation are the first to truly embody the concept of 'global citizen', with the entire knowledge of the world at our disposal, literally at our fingertips. We are also the originators of another unique paradigm, participating daily in something that can best be referred to as the cultural conversation. It began with messages exchanged over usenet newsgroups, and has, over time, evolved quite naturally and organically into the many so-called social networks represented by services such as facebook, orkut, myspace, twitter et. al. A basic human urge is the need to be heard, to have a voice with which to share oneself with one's peers. What has been conceptualized as a 'global brain', as the ephemeral, illusive 'noosphere', is the Leviathan, and it is finally here.

Everything I have just said is wrong. The world-mind has always been a characteristic of the human race, the only difference is that now we are able to externalize, refine and track the movements of individual ideas in the noosphere. As above, so below, and so on ad infinitum in endless, fractal complexity. But you already knew this, even if you didn't know you knew it. Every generation likes to feel unique, to feel as if it is 'the first' whereas in truth, every generation is merely an echo of the previous one, albeit a more refined version, a slight variation on a familiar theme. Similarly, every generation has experience with the 'cultural conversation' in some way, shape or form. Hegel, in the 1700's, called it the 'zeitgeist'; the theosophists arrived at an approximation of it and chose to call it the 'akashic records'; the good people of 1980's Mtv called it 'pop culture' and James Cameron made a movie about it and called it 'eywa'. Our generation is unique in that our cultural conversation is truly global, in the sense that it includes more people than any other generation before us. Even our children learn how to access the internet almost as soon as they learn how to speak, if not sooner.

The gist of the matter is that being part of this grand cultural conversation, it is safe to assume that almost everyone (give or take the few inevitable outliers) is privy to the same knowledge, that there exists, at any time, a superset of collective information that is shared equally by the collective consciousness. Consider, for example, the rapid (almost virulent) spread and enduring appeal of internet memes. This opens up all kinds of possibilities in terms of marketing to this new, ultra-savvy generation. In order to appeal to the interests of the new consumer, products must be packaged accordingly, wrapped in the terminology of the 'new' generation, riffing on whatever happens to be at the forefront of the cultural conversation.

A great example is the announcement trailer for the game 'Dead Island'.

The relatively short, approximately 3 minute long trailer incorporates several tropes and idioms prominent in the current zeitgeist and then leverages them successfully, making a lasting impact on the viewer. The music is sensitive, evocative, and poignant; the opening sequence, with the close-up shot of the eye, coupled with the music, is heavily reminiscent of the wildly popular tv show LOST. The scenes that immediately follow are out of chronological sequence, running backwards inter-cut with scenes running forward, meeting halfway, highlighting the tragedy at the heart of the trailer, which is then further amplified by a short 'coda' sequence at the end of the trailer, which is, again, out of chronological sequence. This was a technique used most popularly in the movie 'Memento', and subsequently emulated in several other pop culture staples such as music videos. This is clearly not a novel technique, but it is well executed, and succeeds in engaging the viewer. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the trailer features zombies, a particular fixation in the current cultural consciousness. The most telling part of the entire trailer, however, is that it is completely animated using CGI and thus says nothing about the gameplay and/or the graphics of the finished product. What it does manage to do, and do quite well, is get people to notice the game. All these factors coupled together make for a compelling viewing experience and are sufficient to propel the trailer, and with it, the game, into the ongoing cultural conversation.

Which leads me to ask the inevitable question: what else are we being encouraged to talk about, and perhaps more importantly, what are we leaving out of the conversation?

F*#k Twilight.

2011-02-04T09:52:00.003+05:30

Media Consumption Alert!
It is my duty to inform all and sundry that I am currently hip deep in Charlie Huston's 'Half the Blood of Brooklyn', the third 'Joe Pitt' casebook, and am in imminent danger of picking up the fourth and fifth volumes soon. The Joe Pitt Casebooks being the chronicles of a certain eponymous undead P.I. who often finds himself mired in unlikely (and often deadly) situations, involving bad guys, vampires (humans afflicted by a 'Vyrus' that consumes their blood, necessitating the need to periodically replenish their own bodily supply) and ..well.. 'others'.

Major appeal: It's not twilight. This is hard-boiled, Chandleresque vamp-fiction that takes itself with a pinch of saltpeter, with a wink and a tip of the hat to classic vampire literature in the vein of Bram Stoker and (dare I say it) Anne Rice. Set in contemporary New York, the books stay true to their pulp origins, and like their traditional pulp counterparts, remain just as enjoyable - down to the last ~~drop~~ page.

Protip: While each book can be read separately as a standalone novel, there is an overarching storyline that is carried forward by each book until the final, stunning, conclusion, so maintaining the reading order is highly recommended.

Checklist:

Already Dead
No Dominion
Half the Blood of Brooklyn
Every Last Drop
My Dead Body

Also, if you liked these, you might want to check out Charlie Huston's excellent work on the new ongoing Wolverine series, the aptly titled (and hyper-violent) Wolverine: The Best There Is.

Happy Reading!

Indi-Pindi Day!

2010-08-15T22:44:00.000+05:30

Patriotism [pa·tri·ot·ism] [pey-tree-uh-tiz-uhm] is...
living in a foreign country for nigh on two years, having left friends and family behind, working at a less-than-minimum-wage job for unbelievable hours at a stretch, weekdays and weekends, day in and day out, often with less than four hours of sleep to make just enough money to pay rent, busting your hump at school so you can some day hope to graduate and get a real job, one which allows you to pay off your (ever-increasing) debts, be they to your parents, towards student loans, or due to your monthly credit card payments, but still using LifeStyles brand condoms, made in INDIA [over 1.2 billion sold in the USA!]

Jai Hind! :p

To The One That Got Away

2010-04-19T23:00:00.002+05:30

i had a dream about you this morning

and it was one of those

happy/sad things

because you were beautiful

(in the dream)

as always

and i enjoyed seeing you

again

and talking to you

but you

were not really

there.

And in a way

i think i

was

happy-er

that you

weren't.

Crossing the Vaitarani

2010-04-08T03:55:00.005+05:30

'This is the terror. To have emerged from nothingness, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression - and with all this yet to die.' -Ernst Becker

Splashdown. We've fallen down the hole into what looks like another cavern, which echoes with the flow of some large body of water. As my eyes adjust to the dark, I see that we are at the banks of an underground river. The river is wide, and the opposite bank is hard to see. Strange lights, like will 'o the wisps, provide some dim illumination, and by this wan light I can see my darker self sprawled on the ground some ways away. I stand up, and the blood rushes away from my head, making me dizzy. The fall has left me bruised and aching, but thankfully, nothiing is broken. I make my way to the lip of the bank, walking slowly to keep my head from spinning, my feet making soft, squishy, *crunching* noises. I can't look down to identify the source of the sounds, because I am riveted by the horrifying sight before me. The river is not water at all, but blood, and as my senses reel, I am suddenly aware of the overpowering stench of rotting flesh that pervades the entire cavern.

Before I can recover, several of the lights materialise in front of me, and rush straight at my head. My legs buckle under me and it feels as if my weight has doubled. There's a buzzing in my ears, and I'm overcome by a sudden sense of vertigo. I black out for a moment and when I come to again, I'm vaguely aware of another presence in my head.

And then I hear the screaming from behind me. I whirl around to find my adversary pitifully scrambling away from the river, only to end up cowering against the curved stone wall of the cavern, the Fear come naked in his terrified screams.

Curiously, I am not afraid. I look down at my feet, and find myself surrounded by human bones, rotting muscle, skin and offal. The 'ground' is not stone or rock, being entirely composed of the skeletal remains of countless bodies. A subterranean golgotha, a thousand times worse than any other place of death imaginable. And the odor of death permeates this place through and through. And still, I feel no fear, while my dark half rants and screams obscenities at me, desperately scrabbling to climb the walls of this place, to no avail.

I am impelled to speak. The voice and intent are mine, but the words seem to come from somewhere else, a part of me that I had no access to except perhaps in dreams. The sensation is not unpleasant, in fact quite the contrary, I feel a refreshing sense of purpose, of wholeness, of finally being in control.

"What's wrong? Isn't this what you wanted?"

"Shut up! You don't know what you've done! This isn't our time!!"

"Why? What are you so afraid of? Death?"

"Don't you be so glib you shit! What do you know of death?"

"I know that death is a fact of life. All that are born must die. I have nothing to fear from death. And neither do you."

"WORDS! More of your damnable words! YOU CAN'T DEFEAT DEATH WITH WORDS! NOBODY CAN!"
And then he breaks down, all the anger going out of him, leaving only the Fear, naked and vulnerable.
"Please. I don't want to die. Just get me out of this place. I promise, I swear, I'll leave you alone."

"You know as well as I do that's not going to happen. You are a part of me. My first reaction to the world."

"Then why are you doing this!!"

"Because you've become lost. I needed to find you again. Stripped of all your posturing, reduced to the basic facts of your being. And here we are."

"Look, this will be the end of us. You don't really want that do you? We will be returned to the void. AND I DON'T WANT TO GO BACK!!"

"Returned to the void?? Death is not a return to nothingness. Who can claim to emerge from nothing? Can you? Where did you get this body from? This form, this shape you hold, this structure holding you, can you presume to claim ownership of any of its component parts? You don't own any of it, not one molecule, not one atom. It belongs to the all, every last speck of your existence, so dont resist it, and dont deny it. Not one of us has emerged from nothing, we owe our existence to the grand infinitude of all creation. So why fear Death? We come from the All, we live and breathe the All, and to the heart of the Universe itself is where we shall go when we die. We are all of us, each one woven into the tapestry of life, there is no place for Fear in this system. Come, take my hand, brother. Let me show you."

We hold out our hand. I can see the Fear holding him back, but I can also see the Will radiating outward from Us into him, and moving along that ephemeral thread, he takes a step forward, and grasps it. The touch is electric. Everything changes. The river doesn't foam with blood anymore, its speed arrested. Time has no meaning. I am whole again, alone no more. And I know exactly what I have to do. I move towards the river, and the blood begins to churn again, lapping at my feet. A terrible black smoke fills the entire cavern, buzzing with the angry noises of a thousand insects, stinging at my eyes and throat, but I can scarcely feel any pain. I wade in to the river of souls, the blood hot, burning away at my flesh, until I am completely submerged. And I close my eyes.

Prelude; Endgame

2010-04-05T06:15:00.001+05:30

All is darkness. I am cold and alone, on a bare stone floor as before. My adversary, the aggressor, is none but myself. And I am alone. I'm back in the cavern again. I am on the ground, he is standing tall in his rags, all sackcloth and ashes, pacing back and forth on the cold stone floor, cackling as he tears pages from a battered old leather diary. My diary.

"Oh look, here's a fun excerpt!"

He reads an excerpt from my diary to me, one of my low points, about how I feel I'm slowly making my way through every person on the planet, alienating each one, and this makes me sad, because there are a lot of people, and its going to take me a long time to isolate myself from each one, personally.

"A tad dramatic, wouldn't you say? Oh wait, you DID say!", followed by a burst of maniacal laughter.

I shift my weight around, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. There is no visible source of light, and yet I'm able to 'see' him/me.

"Why do you look like me? Who are you?", I ask again.

"Isn't it obvious? I am the God of HELLFIRE, and I bring you.. naah, just kidding. I AM you. Well, a part of you anyway. I'm the one who cautions you against risk, the little voice in your head that keeps you from killing yourself every time, the part of you that hates everything else. Sad but true!"

As he speaks, he becomes more animated, and conversely, I feel weaker. He seems to be drawing the strength right out of me, feeding his own frail frame, appearing taller, more imposing with each word.

"You've been digging yourself into this hole for a long time, my man. I'm just here to liven up the atmosphere!", so saying, he grabs me by the neck, and I'm dragged towards the lip of what I now see is a deep chasm, powerless to resist.

"You're gonna fall for a loooong time, boy. Are you sure you want to do this? The risks are high in this game, and the dice are loaded aaaall the way down!"

I've always been scared of heights. Enjoying my fear, he stands over me, and recites from another page..

"The heights by mediocre men reached and kept, were not attained by sudden flight, but they, whilst their companions slept, soiled their underpants in their fright! Aahahahaha! Derivative, to be sure, but how apt! A visionary sir, truly!"

And just then, I realize what's happening here. If he is me, then I am him. And this is all just a sick fucking game in my head. But there's only one way to find out.
As he's about to speak again, I interrupt loudly from the floor, "Oi! That's MY diary you're reading from, and I've had high times as well as low. Turn the page, fucker. I'm not all about the gloom and doom. There's self-absorbed misery, and there's flashes of light and brightness." He's visibly taken aback by this sudden change in my demeanor, and I take advantage of his hesitation.

"You might be one aspect of me, but I have more than just one face. I wear several masks, and you're only my least favorite. You think you're in control of the situation, but you've got it all upside down. You think you can scare me by dangling me over this precipice, this black hole in my psyche that I've been running away from? I'm willing to bet that you're more afraid of this than I am." Saying this, I leap off the floor towards him, and grabbing him in a strange, awkward hug, I push us both over the edge and into the darkness.

Too Long for Facebook

2010-03-29T08:31:00.002+05:30

It's Sunday evening. I have just awakened from a day-long dream. As I sit up on the couch, shaking the stardust from my hair, I have the strange, unsettling sensation that somewhere, I'm still asleep and dreaming. And then I'm looking out my window watching the moon rise. And then I realize I can hear Iron and Wine's version of Such Great Heights playing somewhere off-camera. And then I think I'm going to cry. But then I wake up. And everything is exactly the same.

But for Today, I'm Just Happy (That You're Not Here to See Me)

2010-03-09T16:07:00.011+05:30

Ever get that feeling, like your life is being written by a mad, drunken, crotchety old poet
who, ranting against the world, prophesies your misfortunes with unnerving accuracy?

Me neither.

Yesterday
I went out
into the sun:
a rare thing for me;
long accustomed
to dimly lit
rooms
with peeling wallpaper
and
overflowing trashcans.

Passing by an old saloon,
a bum asked me for change
I gave him my last cigarette, instead
He looked at me with watery eyes
and muttered "fuck you"
tossing it back at me
disgusted, insulted
his wrinkled face
and crazy eyes
retreating now into the purple haze of memory.

smoking
coughing
i walk around town late at night
the policemen know me
by now
and ignore my carcass
while
the prostitutes on the corner
wait
for sunrise
tapping nails,
(chipped)
on lampposts,
(phallic)
scratching at moles on stretch-marked thighs
red lipstick smiles
smeared
across the face of night

back home, last friday,
a man he asked me
when cottage cheese
tasted better,
before
or
after,
the coming of Christ.
It depends
(i said)
on where your shadow falls
at sunset on a rainy day
but then again
one can never be sure
about these things
especially
if you've been drinking
the vinegary gray wine of despair
as long as i have.

the world went crazy
without me
and so i stayed sane
if only just to spite you
Or maybe
I'm
still lie-ing
in a meadow
by a river somewhere
watching
your reflection
as it slowly waxes
and sometimes wanes
within me.

before you go,
let me just say
how i always loved
the emptiness
inside you..

Tomorrow morning
I promise,
i'll bring you flowers
instead of
bad poetry.

an homage to Das Uberwoman

2010-03-08T15:24:00.007+05:30

Let me start this off by being very clear. I don't celebrate women's day. Simply because the female of the species deserves more than just one day of being given the respect she rightfully deserves.

Women are an embodiment of the female aspect of Creation, and should be treated as such, as equals in all human affairs. Men and women complement each other's qualities and capabilities, and are merely two halves of the same whole, like yin and yang, existing in a state of co-related, mutually dependent, and dynamic harmony.

Unfortunately, in recent memory, the feminine principle has been suppressed by religions obsessed with masculinity, devolved versions of originally monotheistic religions that recognized the existence of the One in the Many. We must return to basic principles, learning from the past. Just as the mystical traditions speak of Adam and Eve, the primal male and female pair, there exist too the ultimal pair, the ones that epitomise our divinity. The Super-Man and..

The SuperWoman
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What will the superwoman be, of whom we sing -
She who is coming over the dim border
Of Far To-morrow, after earth’s disorder
Is tidied up by Time? What will she bring
To make life better on tempestuous earth?
How will her worth
Be greater than her forbears? What new power
Within her being will burst into flower?
She will bring beauty, not the transient dower
Of adolescence which departs with youth -
But beauty based on knowledge of the truth
Of its eternal message and the source
Of all its potent force.
Her outer being by the inner thought
Shall into lasting loveliness be wrought.

She will bring virtue; but it will not be
The pale, white blossom of cold chastity
Which hides a barren heart. She will be human -
Not saint or angel, but the superwoman -
Mother and mate and friend of superman.

She will bring strength to aid the larger Plan,
Wisdom and strength and sweetness all combined,
Drawn from the Cosmic Mind -
Wisdom to act, strength to attain,
And sweetness that finds growth in joy or pain.

She will bring that large virtue, self-control,
And cherish it as her supremest treasure.
Not at the call of sense or for man’s pleasure
Will she invite from space an embryo soul,
To live on earth again in mortal fashion,
Unless love stirs her with divinest passion.

To motherhood she will bring common sense -
That most uncommon virtue. She will give
Love that is more than she-wolf violence
(Which slaughters others that its own may live).

Love that will help each little tendril mind
To grow and climb;
Love that will know the lordliest use of Time
In training human egos to be kind.

She will be formed to guide, but not to lead -
Leaders are ever lonely - and her sphere
Will be that of the comrade and the mate,
Loved, loving, and with insight fine and clear,
Which casts its searchlight on the course of fate,
And to the leaders says, ‘Proceed’ or ‘Wait.’

And best of all, she will bring holy faith
To penetrate the shadowy world of death,
And show the road beyond it, bright and broad,
That leads straight up to God.

... and all will be One again. Ah bugger it, a very happy women's day to you all. Peace, Love and Respect! :)

the heart of the lotus is one

2010-02-23T18:43:00.010+05:30

"Ye ask, who are those that draw us to the kingdom, if the kingdom is in Heaven? ...the fowls of the air, and all beasts that are under the earth or upon the earth, and the fishes of the sea, these are they which draw you, and the kingdom of Heaven is within you; and whoever shall know himself shall find it. Strive, therefore, to know yourselves, and ye shall be aware that ye are the sons of the almighty Father; and ye shall know that ye are in the city of God, and ye are the city."

We are living in a time when it is possible for us to take control of our destiny as a species. The transition from child to adult, from novice to initiate, from human to superhuman, does not occur by itself. It requires dedication, the conscious exercise of will, and a rigorous process of constant self-improvement through self-examination. Exposing oneself to the scrutiny of the mind's eye is not easy, but it is necessary if one wishes to refine one's consciousness.

'AUM'- so chanted, in parable, the ancient Indian Seers-
Is the three-fold basic vibration, the musical sound
'To Be', Being, and Ceasing-from-being.
Unfolding as a lovely flower, eight-petalled,
An octave of consequential notes:
Seven the grades, the inter-locking ratios,
The fellowship linking the Many in the One
With the bond of brotherhood, of a common Father as sons.

As humans, we are all living in a state of violence. The primal urge for violence finds expression in anger, in hate, in resentment and suspicion of one's fellow beings and is satiated only when it returns, magnified manifold, to its originator, in its pure form, as violence. The instinct for self-preservation is a throwback to an antediluvian period in our development. It is one of the many outmoded 'instincts' holding us back from achieving our full potential. The Golden Rule, in its many forms, teaches us the secret of peaceful co-existence- empathy. Only when we reconcile ourselves with the world, and the people around us, can we truly be happy. The instinct for self-preservation has no basis if we eliminate the concept of 'self' from our lexicon. Us and them; You and I; are both one and the same. Love thy neighbour as you would love thyself. We are all made from the same dust, breathe the same air, and are all destined to return to the same Source.

'A', they said, as they chanted solemnly,
Is the sound of building up,
'M', they said, is the sound of breaking down,
And 'U' is the bridging sound of serialization
Sustaining, extending, holding in balance
The ebb and the flow of Being's course
-The 'Yang' and the 'Yin', the Chinese poets called it-
The relation between that we know as Time,
As Space, or as Consciousness,
Enabling the 'I' to conceive a 'Thou'.

'God' is a fountain that flows back into itself. The concept of eternal return is crucial to this understanding. Nothing ends that does not have a beginning, and nothing begins that does not have an ending. All is governed by the law of cause and effect. All causes bear the seeds of their effects, and all effects bear the mark of the cause that set them into motion. The final nullity is also the birthing ground of infinity. The space between is where one who seeks can hope to find a trace of our divinity.

Gayatri, the Indian sages called this measure,
The 'bird' Gayatri, swift hawk, flight of the Eagle to the Sun,
Bearer of the Plant of continued life
From generation to generation, spanning Time.
Said they, who hummed this mantra Sound,
Seeking thus to demonstrate
The Wheel of the law of progression:
Within the Cause lies the Effect,
Within the 'I' the seed of 'Thou',
Within that inconceivable, the limitless Eternal,
Lies Time, Space, what is, and what is not,
The germ of generation.

The urge to communicate, to make our thoughts apparent, is what drives us. We are unique, as a species, in the sense that we are the only ones to have codified a system of communication, a method by which we can relate to our fellow beings. We have created the glorious mystery of language, and have become captivated by it. Enchanted by the words we speak, we lose sight of the meaning those words convey, and a crucial element is thus lost in translation. The pointing finger is not the moon. There are other, more subtle means of communication available to us, if only we choose to perceive them.

The 'Heart' that 'speaks', the Egyptian Seers called it-
That utters the 'Word' we know as 'Creation'.
'Thoth', they named it, Tongue and Messenger,
Executive of the Power TO BE.

The world is not as it seems. All that we perceive is not all that is. There is an unseen dimension to the world, one that cannot be made apparent by relying on our five senses alone. But when all our senses are in harmony, and when we learn not to rely on one at the expense of the others, we are able to access a 'sixth sense', as it were, one that is composed of all five senses feeding into the mind together, simultaneously. This is the state of nirvana alluded to by the ancients, and accessible to a Buddha. To perceive the world in such a manner is to see the All as it really is, not in part, but in whole. And with this opening of the third eye, the last remaining door of perception is thrown open, and the Mind-of-the-One is allowed to become one with the Mind-of-the-Many. Savitri, Gayatri and Saraswati; Srishti, Stithi, and Vinash; the balance represented by Yin and Yang, between Being and Not-Being, and the creative chaos represented by the Spirit, which, in turn, arises from the tension between any two opposing values; are all reconciled within the Logos.

Eight-petalled Lotus, City of the Eight,
Octave of potentiality, all things containing,
Maintaining, and at the end resuming:
Lovely Harmonia's musical manifestation,
Source and Sum of Number,
Father and Mother of Doing, Being, and Knowing-
Within thy cup, O Flower, those Seers saw enshrined
The Golden Seed of Being's cycle:
Verily, they sang, the Heart of this Lotus is ONE.

But don't just take my word for it. Look within and without, and see for yourself :)

"Let not him who seeks... cease until he finds, and when he finds he shall be astonished; astonished he shall reach the kingdom, and having reached the kingdom he shall rest."

Dreaming at the wall of mystery

2010-02-18T19:11:00.004+05:30

Hm. Haven't posted on the blog in a while. Well, here's another exciting segment of Rev. Joshi's Travelling Salvation Show; Storytime!

The Wall of Mystery [as retold by Anne Twitty; Parabola 1986]

Far in the East there was once a wall of mystery. Few people approached it. Occasionally, however, someone more daring than the rest made his way to the wall and began to climb. It was not easy to climb to the top of the wall, but some persevered. Those who reached the top of the wall and looked over to the other side were seen to smile; then they slipped over the wall and were never seen again.

After a while, the people of that country learned to recognize the signs that told them someone was about to approach the wall. That person's eyes would begin to stare through and beyond his surroundings. He grew forgetful, and would often fail to answer questions put to him, seeming absorbed in other questions, the nature of which was obscure to those around him.

Though the people did not want to risk climbing the wall themselves, they very much wanted to know what lay on the other side of it. The next time they noticed someone with staring eyes and the look of inner vision, they brought chains and waited beside the wall. As the young man began to climb, they seized his feet and fastened chains to them. Still, he climbed upward, until at last he reached the top of the wall.

He looked over. He smiled, just as the others had, a smile of rapture. The men at the foot of the wall, overcome with curiosity, pulled on the chains, and pulled him back. Eagerly, they began to question him. What was it like on the other side? Why had he smiled? What had he seen? But none of their questions were ever answered. By the time the young man's feet touched the ground, he had lost the power of speech.

~end sermon~

Obligatory, obfuscated hidden link here.

and as I fell, I heard a voice say..

2009-11-29T18:47:00.006+05:30

It's 4am. Shouldn't you be asleep?

>Hmph. I should be dead.

Dead? Now why would you say something like that?

>I dunno. Just.

Are you afraid of dying?

>I dunno. Maybe..

Hm. Why do you think that is?

>What are you, my shrink? Lay off!

Now now. No need to be so confrontational, we're all friends here.

>Speaking of which, where exactly is "here"?

It's a place..

>..in my head..

..Well, yes. And no.

>Explain.

I can't.

>Why not?

You're supposed to figure it out on your own.

>Ah. I see.

Not yet you don't. But you will.

>How?

Well, traditionally, you'd start with opening your eyes.

>Oh wow. Another straight answer. Great.

I think you already know what I have to say to that.

>...

>I'm asking the wrong questions..?

Oh no. You're asking the right questions, sure enough. It's just..

>What?

..the wrong time. It's too early in the story to start revealing all the answers.

>I call bullshit.

You can call whatever you like, it doesn't change the fact that I can't tell you anything right now.

We shouldn't even be having this conversation yet. There's a ton of exposition to go through first, character development, foreshadowing, yadda yadda yadda. And remember, always keep an ace up your sleeve. You gotta keep the audience guessing.

>Oh please. "Always leave them wanting more". What a cliche.

Don't underestimate the power of a cliche.

>Sigh. I suppose now you'll explain.

And how can you say that?

>I dunno. Just a feeling I have.

What kind of feeling?

>Like I've..lived this..before. Like deja vu, only weirder.

Indeed. This particular facility of yours is going to come in very handy, in the days to come. You've only been skimming the surfaces so far, floating along with the currents, but you really need to learn how to surf the waves. Now if only you could combine the two..

>The two what?

Foresight and hindsight.

>Ah. And what good would that do me?

You'd finally be able to perceive life the way it was meant to be perceived.

>In glorious stereoscope?

Something like that. But you need to take it one step at a time. You're close to the edges of it, but you're too easily distracted, too eager to make the leap. Here's an image.

>That's my grandmother. What does she.. oh.

Exactly. Remember what she used to say?

>"Nanga koode ujaad mein." The naked man jumps into a wasteland.

Indeed. As she put it, it is the prerogative of the naked, the unprepared, and the reckless, to throw caution to the wind, and jump willy-nilly into the barren wasteland of hopelessness. "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish? Son of Man, you cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats.."

>I must confess, I have no idea what you've been going on about. Actually, I'm quite lost.

Indeed you are. You do realize there is an easy way to deal with that particular issue?

>And what would that be?

Go find yourself!

>Ah. Brilliant.

Aren't I? Well, looks like my work here is done. Cheerio, pip pip, and all that. Keep a stiff upper lip and all, the excrement, it's going to be flying thick and fast pretty soon. And I'm afraid I won't be too much help this time. It's still too early for me to make an actual appearance, and I've tarried too long as it is. I mean, you haven't even written in my grand entrance yet.

>But I don't even know who you are!

Ahem. I daresay I'm tempted to resort to another popular cliche. Summat to do with pots and kettles, if you catch my drift.

>What does that even mean??

Nevermind. Oh look, a random reference to a song that doesn't quite fit but has a deeper meaning when considered in the context of this particular incident/blog post/drivel!

>What, where??

Here.

Incoming Message from the Big Giant Head

2009-11-04T09:44:00.004+05:30

Greetings, faithful readers! Just a quick update, November being National Novel Writing Month, expect limited bloggery. The downward spiral story will continue in December, so bear with us! Rukaavat ke liye khed hai, and all that.

50,000 words by November 30th. Woot! :D

ps : if anybody else is participating, I'm bluechartreuse.

Denial

2009-10-21T19:34:00.005+05:30

I'm falling. How far can I fall before I reach the bottom? I'm falling. At some point, I lose consciousness.

~*~*~

Something cold slithers across my face, leaving a trail of slime. I'm awake, but I can't move.

I'm lying flat on the ground, no telling where, but on the bright side, I can feel all my limbs, and nothing seems to be broken. And then I hear it. Harsh, ragged breathing, off to the left, and directly above my head. I turn my head to look, but all I can make out through the shadows is a humanoid shape, squatting over me. What the hell..? I try to stay very still but it's too late, the thing seems to sense that I'm awake.

With a flash of crooked, rotting teeth, the creature says, "Welcome to denial", its voice dripping with malicious glee.

"Wh..where am I? What is this place?"

"I'll give you one hint, it's NOT a river in egypt!", the thing replies and cackles, the sound echoing off stone walls, raucous and obscene.

I prop myself up on an elbow, and take a look around. I seem to be in a cavern of some sort, judging from the way the sound echoes in here, but it's too dark to see anything clearly. I try to get up, but my head starts to spin almost immediately, and I fall back to the floor.

"Now now cully, that won't do.. make an effort. Come on." I can almost see the cruel, mocking smile on its lips. "I dare you to move!" I fall back into oblivion, peals of laughter following me all the way.

~*~*~

I'm falling again. Deeper still?

~*~*~

I wake up. I'm in a chair. I feel too lightheaded to try getting up, so I stay where I am and wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The smell registers first. The strong, sharp smell of hospitals. Disinfectant and blood. The room is strangely familiar, and then I realise I'm sitting next to a hospital bed. There's a bottle of IV fluid suspended next to it. Deja vu. I've been here before. Recently. I don't want to know who's in the bed. I don't want to look, but I can't turn my head away.

~*~*~

What's happening now? My arms are so small, my fingers are so tiny. I can't move again. I think I've wet myself. Oh fuck, I think I'm a baby again. There's a lot of noise coming from the next room. People yelling. Things breaking, crashing to the ground. I don't want to cry. I want to be brave, but this.. thing.. is welling up from inside me, like a dead weight rising to the surface, pushing it's way up out of my stomach and clawing its way out through my windpipe. A scream. But not mine. There's a loud sound, louder than anything I've ever heard before, and then suddenly everything is silent. I can't even hear the blood in my ears anymore.

~*~*~

I'm in the back of a car. Bigger now. Older. And I'm scared. I can hear someone crying. Was that a gunshot?

~*~*~

The crying gets louder. But it's not me. I'm lying very still. I don't know this house. This is not my bed. Someone I love has just died. Maybe if I just lie still like this, the cancer will pass me over, leave me be.

~*~*~

I'm at my desk now. Bombay. Every square inch of wall and ceiling is covered with posters. Newspaper clippings pinned up on one wall, a veve on another. The sea is right outside, I can hear the waves smashing against the rocks. The blade feels so cold against my skin. The blood that leaps out is hot. But I can't feel anything else. I'm just.. numb.

~*~*~

The sun is so bright against my eyes, I have to shade them with my hand. I'm at the Lakdikapul MMTS station. The 8:17 to Hi-Tec city is just turning the bend. My eyes are still red from last night. How could she do that to me? I'm not thinking straight, this is a bad idea, maybe I should reconsider, but by then it's too late. I've already jumped, and for one awful moment, I'm living in suspended animation, the train inches away, and I don't want to be here. The train hits me anyway, smacking into my side with a sickening thud.. and miraculously depositing me back onto the platform with three broken ribs, a mouthful of blood, and a lifetime of regret.

~*~*~

"Had enough, cully? No? Don't worry, there's plenty more where that came from!"

~*~*~

Something horrible has happened to someone I love. And I couldn't do anything to stop it, or take it back. It wasn't my fault. And yet, the guilt. Another bottle of wine, more booze to beat back the gnawing pain. No matter how far down I push it, it keeps coming back, biting its way back to the surface.

"Oh aye, I'm gonna eat you ALIVE boy. Eat you from the inside out."

~*~*~

I need to stop. I've been falling too long. "Ha! As if it's that easy. You're in MY world now, boy. I DARE you to move." And he's right. I can't. I can't move an inch, I'm paralysed. I'm stuck. I can't move forward. I can't do this anymore. I just can't fight this awful gravity. I can't keep running away from the past. But I have to make a stand, break free from all this. I struggle to get up, but its useless, my body won't obey me. I decide to confront my antagonist "Who are you! Show your face, you coward!"

"I'm me, who are you?", accompanied by more cackling. I'm getting sick of this. I've just been made to relive some of the worst moments in my life, and to this ..thing.. it's all just a joke? All I can do is howl in rage. So I do that. Until I'm hoarse.

And he just chuckles. "There, there. Your anger is useless here." A pause, and, "You really don't know who I am yet? All right then. Here." he says, stepping into the light.

And its a trick. I know it is. It has to be. Another sick, twisted illusion designed to confuse and frighten me. Because the face he's wearing, is my own.

~*~*~

Fear Itself

2009-10-19T16:47:00.005+05:30

I came home completely plastered last night. I had intended to quit drinking with such frequency, but on my way home from work, I'd run into an ex-girlfriend. The encounter left a bad taste in my mouth, and the only thing that would get it out was a lot of alcohol. I made a detour and headed over to the Undertow. There's something about a seedy bar that puts my mind at ease. There's something about the cheap whiskey that puts my wallet even more at ease.

Flashcut to my apartment, three hours later. I'm struggling with the keys for what feels like an eternity before I finally let myself in. Two steps to the hatstand, sharp turn left and I'm in the kitchen. Kitchen sink, water, waterspout, bump, headache. I press a palm to my throbbing skull and stagger into the living room. The cleverly placed couch prevents my arse from making contact with the floor, where several splinters lie waiting, sharp, and hungry. I can sense their resentment through the haze of liquor. I'm waiting for the room to stop spinning so I can get off the couch. It doesn't show any signs of slowing down, so I time my jump, and leap for the hallway when it swings past.

I hit the bathroom door head-first. Ow. But this is actually a stroke of good luck, because I feel the sudden urge to vomit. I manhandle my way in somehow, and hunching over my old friend the toilet bowl, I let the bile out. Five minutes later and my whole body is racked with chills, my stomach feels like its sticking to my spine, and my spine feels like it wants to crawl out of my back and run across the streets, kicking and screaming like a spastic on steroids. My brain feels like its melting out through my nostrils and my liver feels like my heart, small and hard and cold like a piece of shattered stone at the bottom of the sea. I wait for the shivers to subside, and when I'm sure there's nothing else left for me to expunge, I flush the lot, and slump back against the cold porcelain.

My bleary eyes fall on Jeff Goldblum, who's been watching the whole thing. "Er, you need to uh, run, you know." he says, looking right at me. "Oh fuck off Jeff Goldblum, you don't know what you're talking about." "Um, actually, I'm quite certain that they're going to uh, be here any minute now. You'd better erm, haul ass if you want to er, survive this." This is insane. This is batshit crazy. Cockroaches, squirrels whatever, but Jeff 'the fly' Goldblum? No way. Even I'm not that crazy. "Dude, what the hell are you talking about? I'm just drunk aight?" "I KNOW that!", Jeff splutters, eyes bloodshot, "But that's what makes you so vulnerable right now, you're not completely in control, its easier for your subconscious mind to take over, don't you see? My god man, you've left the door wide open, ANYTHING can come through!" "Whaddayamean, anything?", I ask, and just then, I hear a terrible keening sound, like nails being dragged across a hundred blackboards. "What the hell is that?" "My god, they're here already!", Jeff exclaims, as the sound increases in pitch, and complexity. I can hear a wailing now too, over and above the nails. The sound is awful, and the images it's invoking are even worse. Like a thousand mutilated babies, all crying in unison, as the world burns around them, like a dog being whipped mercilessly, and howling at the injustice of it all, like the yowls of a cat being skinned alive. I have no words to describe that awful sound. And it was getting worse. And it was getting closer.

"You need to get the hell out of here.", Jeff Goldblum yells over the horrifying clamour. That's easier said than done, the bathroom window is too small, and the bathroom door is shaking like a leaf in a storm. He jerks his head toward the commode, "Quit wasting time, and go!" Into the commode? What the hell, this isn't trainspotting, how the fuck am I going to fit into the shitpot of all places? Despite my misgivings, there's a frenzied look in Jeff's eyes, and just then, the sound is right outside the bathroom, and something starts to batter against the door, each bang accompanied by a horrible, sick, squelching sound, like ruptured flesh. "All right, but how do I get in there?" "The world is malleable enough. As long as your will holds out, anything is possible. Now GO!" The door begins to splinter, cracks appearing like magic in the sturdy wooden frame. With no other options presenting themselves, and my heart beating against my chest like a ferret on crack, I take a deep breath and jump into the crapper headfirst, just as the bathroom door smashes open, woodchips flying into the air.

[To be continued...]

In which I meet Stella

2009-10-07T15:32:00.004+05:30

So I'm on my way to class last Thursday. It's already five past six, and class started at six. I need to file my candidacy form for graduation, today's the last day, and in a classic display of reckless brinksmanship, I haven't even looked at the form yet.

I'm walking fast, smoking furiously, and thinking how it probably wasn't such a good idea to skip lunch and still get loaded right before class. I'm out of breath by the time I reach the event center, so I slow down to a more human pace, giving my lungs a chance to catch up. There's a stitch in my side the size of Texas, and my bum knee hurts like a bastard. I really need to quit smoking and start running again, I think to myself for perhaps the thousandth time. I lean against a tree, and set my bag down for a breather. It doesn't help that my laptop weighs about as much as a small elephant with low self esteem and an endless supply of comfort food. I'm just about to leave when I notice a squirrel at my feet, watching me intently. Now there's a lot of squirrels on campus, and most of them are pretty fearless and upfront about their territory, but this one's wearing a leather jacket. A tiny little leather jacket and Audrey Hepburn wayfarers, raised over its head, between its ears.

"Er... can I help you?" I venture, remembering Phil from a few weeks ago.

"Oh I'd say you could. This is MY territory bub, you better getchyer ass offa that tree there."

Now I'm not used to taking shit from just about anyone, least of all talking squirrels, so I overcome my trepidation and counter with,
"O rly? Well I don't see your name on it." (Juvenile, I know, but how else are you supposed to talk to an unreasonably confrontational squirrel?)

"On the contrary, mon frere, my name IS on that very tree which you are currently leaning your bony little arse against", the squirrel says, pointing at the base of the trunk, right by my left foot. I crouch down, incredulous, but sure enough, there it is, like miniature jungle graffiti, gnawed into the bark in letters three inches high, a single name, "Stella".

"Oh."

"Like I said. MY turf, bitch."

"Oi, First of all, I'm not your bitch, and second, I was just catching my breath." I can't believe I'm getting talked down by a squirrel. A SHE squirrel! Called Stella, no less.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." She says, with a dismissive flick of her tail.

A moment of awkward silence follows, while the evening sun moves toward some conveniently placed mountains, and a chill breeze blows through campus, bending the grass and shaking the leaves off trees. Fall is here.

"Stella. That's uh..a nice name.." I attempt, trying to defuse the tension.

She affixes me with a blank stare. "For a squirrel. Go on. Say it."

"Wha..? Of course not. I mean, in general. That's a nice name."

"Well, my girlfriends call me the Seeker", she says, relenting, and winks, with a smirk.

"Ha! That's cute.", I blurt out. Well it IS cute! A squirrel called the seeker!

"Not really. You know how it is."

I don't have an answer to that. I do know how it is, and it's not exactly a barrel of laughs.

"That constant hunger in the pit of your stomach, makes you want to grind your teeth, to gnaw the mask off the face of the world, just to see what lies beneath, days when you just want to set it all on fire. Days when you can't sit still, when you have to get off your feet and just go. Somewhere, anywhere, just to see what's over the next hill, to see if there's any meaning to it all. It's not fun being a seeker. And you know when it really hurts? When you meet someone who distracts you from your constant seeking, and you settle down, take a breather, think 'hey, this is it, I'm done looking, I'm gonna settle down with this girl, and I'm gonna concentrate on making her happy' and right then, just when you decide to chuck it all and settle for a life of contentment, she ups and leaves, 'cos she's seen right through you, and knows that you're one of 'em. A seeker, a ramblin' man, and for people like us, the search is never over. That's what sucks about this job."

I'm speechless. Mostly 'cos everything she said hits very, very close to home. And then something occurs to me, and I can't help but ask.

"Wait, so you're saying you're a lesbian??"

"Oh I'm a boy, I'm a boy, but my ma won't admit it", says Stella in a sing-song voice.

"Ah." Now I'm just confused.

"Well, it can't be all bad, being a seeker..", I try to sympathize, both for her sake, and mine.

Stella smiles, wryly, "It's a dirty job, but like they say, someone's gotta do it."

"I guess that's true", I say, wanting desperately to agree, to accept that sometimes you have to lose something to gain something, but my heart's not in it.

"There are perks. You don't sleep at night because you're busy searching, but you get to see the sun rise every morning. You search for miles and miles without finding anything, but along the way, you meet a lot of interesting people. Some of them, you might even come to call friends. And when you find the smallest hint, even a tiny clue, heck, any piece of the puzzle, it feels absolutely incredible. There's no rush on Earth that compares. But then again, you know how it is.", she smiles, and since she's absolutely right, I smile back.

"Here, d'you have a smoke on ya?"

"Um, lemme check", I flip open my pack of cigarettes, but there's just one cigarette left.

"Yup, the last one, you want it?"

"Oh no. I just wanted to know if you still had that last one. Do us a favour, hang onto that one eh?
You're going to need it soon." she says, with a sincere look, but then again, how do you know if you can trust a butch dyke squirrel in a bomber jacket?

"Er.. so I don't smoke it then?"

"No. You don't. You should quit 'em altogether actually. Fuckin' things will only end up killing you. Just.. hang onto that last one." this last was almost an imperative, such was the urgent sincerity with which she looked at me. Stella seemed to realize that I had noticed this minor break in character, so she recovered quickly, and slid her shades back over her eyes.

"Well, this was nice, but I'd best be getting back to the search now, aren't you late for class?"

I look at my watch and she's right. It's 6:30, I'm a half hour late! When I look up, she's scampering off across the grass, her tail flashing in and out of sight, like a furry periscope rising through the verdure.

"Hey! Wait up! What if I smoke that cigarette?" But it's too late. Stella the Sapphic Seeking Squirrel has spoken, and split the scene.

I'm sailing on the seas of fate...

2009-09-28T15:18:00.020+05:30

Sundays are good days. I wake up early every sunday somehow. With no school, no commitments to meet, no places to be, I find myself awake at the crack of dawn, watching the sun come up, glittering gold through the palm trees in the East.

This particular Sunday was better than most, a happier, mellower day than the ones in recent memory. The day started early as usual, I managed to clean my room, and my experimental recipe for chorizo con huevos didn't kill, maim or permanently damage anyone. Always a bonus. I stepped out for a cigarette, but somehow I never got round to lighting up. It was a nice day so I put my feet on autopilot like I always do for nice days, and shortly found myself outside the library. And wouldn't you know it, there was a book sale on.

I love book sales. Growing up in Bombay, some of my happiest memories are of Sunday afternoons spent browsing at the used book stalls in Churchgate. Delicately improvised shelters made from discarded plastic sheeting and bamboo poles, bound together with string, rope, wire, and glue, they stretched all the way from Flora Fountain down to the old Parsi well at the edge of Cross Maidan. Rain or shine, the booksellers would be there, setting up their wares at seven in the morning, and taking them down at nine, every night, like clockwork. I think that was one of the first places I felt the touch of probability, of the hidden workings of the world. When I visited Bombay, and book-street, for the first time, I was eight. I had never seen so many books gathered together in one place. An entire street lined with books! I was giddy with delight. My parents worked their way from shop to shop, picking out a novel here, a textbook there, bargaining with the dealers, asking them for such and such book by such author, this writer, that poet. Me, I didn't know where to start or where to stop. So I just ran from one end of the street to the other, drinking everything in, reveling in the glorious decadence of it all. More books than I could read in a lifetime! TWO lifetimes! I was the happiest eight year old on the entire planet.

When we finally moved to Bombay, I would visit book street every chance I got. I often played hooky from college, skipping class to hop on a bus to Churchgate, exchanging last week's book for another, and then catching another bus back to Girgaon chowpatty. I'd leave my body behind on the beach, and let my mind go wherever the book took it. Across the ocean, past Neptune and Pluto, backwards and forwards through time, over strange battlefields and under magical seas, living whole lifetimes in the space of one afternoon.

The annual Strand book sale was another treat. The used book stores in Lucknow gave me a taste for comics, science fiction and Agatha Christie. Book street nursed me on Kafka, Sartre, Jung and Nietzsche. And Strand introduced me to poetry. Neruda, Eliot, Woolf and Alighieri, all in one place, eager to grab my eye, feed my soul. I devoured entire volumes, whole stacks of books, and my appetite just grew. Smoker's Corner was another old haunt, that yielded many treasures, and satisfied many a mid-afternoon craving. Amidst all this chaos, my parents' personal libraries were the snack shops I would frequent between meals, having Ed McBain or Eric van Lustbader for an appetizer, and Wodehouse for dessert. And no matter how many books I read, there were always more to be had. It was heaven on Earth. A patchwork introduction to literature, but an education nonetheless.

Book street isn't there anymore. The street vendors were evicted by the municipal authorities years ago, and though you might still find a few secondhand booksellers in the area, it's just not the same. The Strand annual sale still happens at Shanmukhnanda Hall, but it's getting smaller with each passing year. I guess it's hard to compete with large bookstores like Crossword. Smoker's Corner hasn't changed too much, small enough to stay under the radar I guess, and they still carry those Doctor Who paperback serials I used to love as a kid. Time passes, Bombay changes to Mumbai, the pavements become spotless, unobstructed, and much too clean for the likes of me. Migrants do what they do best, never pitching their tent in the same place too long. Stay awhile, share what little you have to give, then move on.

But the book sale today brought all the happy memories rushing back, of a time less complicated. I breathed in the used book smell, and within moments, I was a child again, fresh-faced and eager, new-made, innocent, and desperate to read everything I could get my grubby little paws on. :)

***

I love California. The sun shines bright and true every day, even when its raining. And days like today make me love it even more. Of all the places in the world I could be, it's a strange and beautiful train of coincidences that have led to me being here. There was a time, not long ago, when I would have given anything to go back in time and change some things about my life. Avoided a lot of hurt, much too much guilt, and a fair amount of pain, both given and received. But looking back, putting things in a certain perspective, seeing my life by the light of this bright new Sun, I realise I don't want to change a thing.

Wherever my feet take me is where I'm meant to be, enmeshed and entangled in life's radiant web, surfing the wave of synchronicity every moment of every day, just... being. Borrowing a pretty phrase from Audrey Niffenegger, as long as there is world and time enough, I'm going to keep on keeping on. The ancient alchemists, the wanderers, the seekers, the founders of secret orders, guardians of 'secret' knowledge, were all deluded, misguided, following imaginary trails down paths leading nowhere. Every place on this planet is the center of all things. The cup that holds the water of life, the place from where everything begins. The origin.

Stop where you are, empty your mind of all conscious thought, close your eyes, and listen. Can you hear it? Can you hear the sea? From deep within the chambers of your heart, the distant echo of all that could have been, all that is, and all that will be. Like a wave crashing through time and space, swirling all around you, all the time. We're adrift on a sea of choices, an ocean of infinite possibilities, and though we can barely begin to comprehend the sheer depth of meaning behind it all, the important thing is, we can try. Come, ride the waves with me. All you have to do is let go.

...and beneath my feet, over my head, in the spaces between my ears, the waves are crashing, crashing.

Secret teachings of all ages

2009-09-25T15:58:00.004+05:30

Strange dream early this morning. I'm working at Silk Road, and this lady comes up to me, looking very pretty, with her headscarf pulled down tight over her hair. She asks for a bowl of rice, and some cocoa beans. "The rice comes with my order, yes?", she asks in lightly accented English. Just then, the phone starts to ring. I quickly tap in her order into the system, and answer the phone with my free hand. It's Sajid, the owner, which is strange, 'cos I thought he was in the kitchen, cooking. "Hello, Joshi?" "Sajid bhai?" "Are you coming in to work today?" "...Erm, but I'm already here.." "Oh good, can you check on the rice?" Things are not making any sense. I look up to check if there's any customers coming into the store, but there's nobody there. Not a soul. Where'd the pretty girl go? I put down the receiver, and head to the back. As I lift the curtain aside, I'm confronted by a bright glowing light. I step in through the doorway and find myself home, in my bed.

For some reason I have my phone in my hand, flipped open. I lift it to my ear, cautiously, and it's Sajid again, "Joshi? Are you still on the line?" "uhrr..buh?" "Listen, if you're already at work, just make sure the rice is ready, and get started on the Chicken Tikka Masala, could you do that?" "Oh..uhm, uh huh" "Great, I'll be in around 12 or so" and hangs up. A quick look at my alarm clock (ha! some alarm clock) tells me its just past 11am. Great, I need to haul ass or I'm gonna be late for work. I strategically roll out of bed and onto the floor, landing hard on my left hip, (Yes, I meant to do that) grab my clothes off the floor and leap into the shower before any of my roommates decide to take an hour long shit. I'm showered, shaved and out the door in five minutes.

It's nice and bright outside, plenty of sun. I'm still thinking about the dream, trying to make sense of the imagery. So I empty my head and try free association. Cocoa beans, coffee beans, stimulants for the mind. The rice comes with her order. For some reason I'm thinking of a bowl of salt. Like the pagans use in their rituals, to symbolise the Earth. A saucer of salt for a magickal disc. The material plane with a pentacle drawn through it. A bowl of rice, a saucerful of secrets, pink floyd! The cover art for that album was designed by Hipgnosis, purveyors of fine art and 'hip', secret knowledge. Much like a dream conveys hidden knowledge from the subconscious mind to the dreaming self. Six degrees of separation and we're back full circle. Interesting.

Full circle, like the rim of a bowl, like a great big ball of fire, up in the sky. Fragments of a stolen lyric run through my head. "Little by little, the night turns around". There's a change coming. I'm on the wrong track, barking up the wrong tree. I need to change my trajectory, chart a new course, reset the controls.

Halfway down the street, passing by the library, there's something else in my head, a poem I seem to half-remember from somewhere...

The thread in the hand of a kind mother
Is the coat on the wanderer's back.
Before he left she stitched it close
In secret fear that he would be slow to return.
Who will say that the inch of grass in his heart
Is gratitude enough for all the sunshine of spring?

Suddenly, Champu (#12)

2009-09-25T14:42:00.002+05:30

These are the ongoing chronicles of my roommate, Chimanlal Champu. Boldly going where no man has gone before, or indeed, should ever go again.

[Champu on... water bodies]

Anirban : When I was a child, I went to swim in a river.. the current was so strong, it almost dragged me along with it..

Champu : How come river has current dude? River is surrounded by land, you must be swimming in a lake!

Insomnia-Alcohol-Hallucinogenic-Painkiller Fun Time

2009-09-22T17:43:00.006+05:30

I've been having some trouble sleeping. A few weeks ago, I fell quite ill. Ever since I got better, I've been staying up all night, only sleeping at dawn. So last night, I decided to try a little experiment. I decided to drink myself unconscious. Not a very good plan, in hindsight, but that's hindsight for you. (Funny word, hindsight, brings to mind a vivid image of being confronted by your own arse, having just pulled your head out of it.) Seven in the evening, and I'm loading my liver with Jager shots. By eight, I've tossed the shot glass out the window, and I'm hitting the bottle straight up. Ten o'clock and I've polished off what was left of the six pack of Guinness I bought last weekend from Safeway (that club card gets you some great deals!). At this point, I'm well loaded, but still not sleepy. So I bust out the thinking pipe, and read a few research papers. The tedium wears on into the watches of the night, but the gates to the realm of Morpheus are yet fastened tight against me.

I pop a couple Vicodin, and settle down to watch the season premiere of House. Ironically enough, House is in rehab, and though the opiates makes everything nice and fuzzy, its somehow still not enough to get me sleepy. Its time to bully my mind into submission. I settle down into bed, close my eyes and pretend to sleep, but you cant bullshit a bullshitter. I'm wide awake. And relaxing my body is just making things worse, my mind is running rings around itself, like an overexcited puppy on a mixture of coke and meth, digging up ideas and memories long buried and humping every tree in sight.

(No, I couldn't think of an analogy for the trees. I'm not a genius aight, or I'd be getting published in seven different bloody languages and have my own personal coterie of bitches instead of posting on a blog that nobody reads and lying awake in bed at 5 in the morning and wondering why I'm alone and where my life went horribly wrong.)

This is ridiculous, I think to myself, grab my jacket and cigarettes, and head out the front door. Then I head back in, put on some pants, and head out again. The night air is cool and refreshing, and my head clears up a little bit. My mind begins to slow down, and I'm beginning to feel pretty good. I feel even better after I accost a passing dumpster and introduce it to what I had for dinner.

When I turn around, there's a huge cockroach on the pavement blocking my way. Its as big as my thumb, cross my heart. My first thought, catapulted right out of my limbic brain, is to kill it. But then I'm a higher mammal, see, I can think twice before I do stupid things. (I said I CAN think twice. Sometimes I do stupid things even though I know they're stupid in advance. Told you I'm no genius. Though I DO share a birthday with Isaac Asimov. My claim to fame!) So I decide to let the poor bastard be, and step over him very carefully. My heads spinning just a little bit, and the stars are making alarming patterns in the sky, so I decide to have a bit of a sit. Good call too, 'cos this is the point at which my legs refuse to obey me or carry me any further. So I float along back to my stoop, and light up a cigarette on the way. When I get there, there's someone waiting for me. A gigantic cockroach called Phil. I know he's called Phil 'cos hes got one of those white tags (with blue borders) pinned to his thorax, "Hello, I'm PHIL". This is a rather disturbing turn of events. Phil is, well, gigantic. He's sitting on my stoop, a cigarette dangling from his lower mandible, and scratching his abdomen distractedly with three of his five claws. And then he turns his comically tiny head, and fixes me with his beady (I know they're technically 'compound eyes' but his head was so damn tiny they looked beady to me, k?) little eyes.

"Well, look who decided to show up" Phil says to me. "Who, me?" "Yes YOU, ya ninny, who else is hallucinating at three in the bloody morning around here?" "Oh, yeah, ha ha" I manage a weak laugh. "Siddown man, you look like you're gonna fall down. Remember survival tip number 15? Works for epic drunks too." So I pulled myself upto the stairs and sat down next to Phil, a peculiar feeling of unreality washing over me. A few awkward moments passed. "So.." I attempted feebly. Phil eyed me askance, with some disdain. (Or so I think. Its very hard to interpret the emotions off a cockroach.) "Yeah?" "So... how's it going?" "Oh well, you know how it is. Just the usual. Surviving, y'know?" I nod in agreement. "Yeah, I hear you." Another few awkward moments pass. "So.. you're some kind of figment of my imagination huh?" Phil shrugged. "I dunno, I'm just here cos they said you had some questions for me." "I do?" Huh. This is news to me. And who are 'they'? "Yessir. Apparently you do, so ask away, and I'll do my best to give you answers, and we can both go to bed, yeah?" "Oh, well, sure."

A beat.

"Um. I cant really think of any questions right now." Damn. "Oh that's okay. I'm a figment of YOUR imagination remember? I probably already know what you're gonna ask." "You do?" "Yup, just gimme a second" Phil takes a long drag on his cigarette, and blows the smoke out through every single trachea. (It looked very impressive, and I think he just did it to show off) "Oh wow. That one again?" he shakes his head in amusement, and looks at me with what seems an awful lot like condescension. "er..i guess.." I have no idea what he's talking about. "Dont worry mate, the answer's a resounding yes. Just hang in there." says Phil, and slaps me on the back. He's pretty strong for a six foot chitin based insect, 'cos I almost lose my balance, barely managing not to fall. "Er, yeah, good to know..I guess" I still haven't the faintest clue what he's talking about. "See, the thing is, you already know what you have to do, you just need to go ahead and do it y'know? We're quite a lot alike, you and I." "We ARE?" What could I possibly have in common with a gigantic cockroach? "Mmhmm..we're both survivors, in our own way, and thats just the beginning. Don't even get me started on the metafictional possibilities this represents..hehe", Phil chirruped, pleased with his wit. "Wow, I guess I never really saw it that way", I said, even though I didn't quite see it yet. "Anytime, man, that's what I'm here for, in a way. To help you see the world from a different angle. Geddit?", he said, wiggling his antennae. I nodded weakly, trying very hard to follow. Phil nodded to himself, and stubbed out his cigarette with a flourish. "Well, guess that's that. I'll be on my way then. Be seeing you", his voice sounding like he was fading further away with each word. "Oh, um, okay sure, yeah" I managed, surprised at the abrupt exit. I mean, I was just getting used to this whole being-granted-wisdom-at-3-in-the-morning-by-a-gigantic-cockroach thing. "Oh and by the by, that other thing, I wouldn't worry about it too much if I was you." he said and actually winked, no mean feat for a creature with no eyelids, and then just sort of.. disappeared.

I sat on the stoop for a while after that, just getting my bearings. What just happened? It was pretty clear I'd just had a very vivid and disconcerting hallucination, but what did it mean? Am I a cockroach who's dreaming he's a man or is all that Kafka I read back in school coming back to haunt me? Maybe the Universe is trying to tell me something. Or maybe I should just lay off the alcohol and the hallucinogenics for a while. Bleh.

I stand up, finish my cigarette, and look to the East. There's just the slightest hint of dawn. The most ineffable feeling of inner peace and well-being bathes me, like a warm glow, and just like that, I know its all going to be just fine. Sometimes all the answers you need are what you already know.

I'm off to bed. It looks like its going to be a beautiful day :)

Surviving the Streets (#2)

2009-09-22T08:14:00.002+05:30

Always, ALWAYS acknowledge people you know, even if you've only met them once. A smile, a nod, a tip of the hat goes a long way. What goes around, comes around. 'Cos loneliness is worse than hunger, worse than sadness, worse than anything dreamt of in your philosophy. And you might have friends now, but when you're all alone and one step away from the edge, an unexpected smile could save your life.

Suddenly, Champu (#9)

2009-09-22T08:01:00.004+05:30

These are the ongoing chronicles of my roommate, Chimanlal Champu. Boldly going where no man has gone before, or indeed, should ever go again.

[Champu on... the joy of yogurt]

Champu : Dude, you can only truly appreciate curd after eating ass-burning items
Me : ... (!?)
Champu : I'm serious dude! The feeling you get after burning your own ass, and then soothing it with curd... *sigh* ...awesome...

Riding The Bus

2009-09-18T02:49:00.010+05:30

Its late evening on a Friday night, and I'm just off my shift, enjoying a leisurely smoke at the end of day's play. This random guy comes up to me and says "Hey, bro. You got a dollar for the bus?" Instinctively, I shrug, and spread my palms outward, universal gesture for "Wish I could help you, but this recession's been hard on us all, especially us starving student types. Whaddagonnado?" But then I remember I've got some loose change in my pants pocket, and the guy looks like he really needs the money, so I arrest him with an upheld finger, while I fumble around for the 75 cents I do have to give. He palms the money, dips his head in gratitude and disappears around the corner. The wrong corner. The closest bus station is round the other side of the block.

The streets have their own language. A hidden alphabet, a lingo, a code. Its a knack you pick up, how to communicate complex ideas via a shrug of the shoulder, a tilt of the head, an incline of the left eyeball and a quiver of the right nostril. I can go through some days without opening my mouth or uttering a single word at all. The semiotics of the sidewalk. And like every language, each speaker imbues it with a little bit of himself. There's a multitude of dialects, a glorious cacophony of voices, a miscellany of inflections and tones to choose from. The same idea can be referred to in many different ways and by many different names, while retaining its quintessence.

Like the 'bus'. The bus that goes nowhere. Sometimes, if pressed, the aspiring passenger will reveal that the bus goes to San Francisco, sometimes Fremont or Sunnyvale, but more often than not, the furthest the bus gets is the nearest liquor store. Or the closest fix.

You think I'm being cynical. But when you sit on the same stoop on the same street every Friday for a whole year, and the same people come up to you every time, and ask you the same question, its kind of difficult not to get just a little bit jaded.

In the Ramayana, there's this really clever bit about a shape-changing demon called Mareech. The demon acquires the form of a beautiful golden deer, captivating the senses of Sita, so much so that she begs her husband Rama to catch the deer and bring it back for her as a pet. Rama, prince-in-exile, is an accomplished tracker and hunter, but the golden deer is much too fleet, and eludes even Rama. Long enough for Ravana, king of the demons, to abduct Sita, who is left unprotected and vulnerable, while Rama chases the demon Mareech. Eventually, however, Rama sees past the illusion, and slays the demon.

The parable uses the simple metaphor of the 'golden deer' to indicate the folly of being captivated by the material world. In the end, Rama uses an arrow, much like the magickal Sword of Reason, to 'kill' the demon, thus destroying the illusion.

The bus that goes nowhere, like Mareech, is a thing of hope. The golden deer, fleeting promise of a better tomorrow, always JUST out of reach. If only I could have another dollar for the bus, I'd make everything right, just one more dollar to get all my shit back together, to make it through the night, to make it to the morning of my tomorrow. Just one more dollar, I'm telling you man, that's all I need.

But you of all people know how it is. Another day, another dollar. Just one more rung to the ladder, and one step closer to the edge. Its a hole that never ends, a bottomless pit into which you can fall forever. Fall long enough, and you forget you're even falling anymore. Round and round the circle goes, where it ends, nobody knows. When you're lost and far from home, its kind of hard to get a grip, or to summon the will to break out of a comfortable rut. Easier said than done, and all that jazz.

Funny thing is, a dollar is a dollar is a dollar. You could invest in a decent fix with a dollar (if you know the right people, and speak the right street-jive), or diversify your portfolio with some liquid assets to help you get through the night. Or you could see that dollar for what it really is, see all the potential condensed within it. If you want it to be, it can be a doorway that can lead to anywhere. Even home. Grab it, hold onto it, and stop falling. Take that dollar and get on the bus. The real bus, the one with wheels and a driver and a destination. Ride that bus through the night, until you see the sun shine down. And you just might find yourself in a better place than you were at before.

(For DollaRapper, BlueBaglady, AngryOvercoatGuy, BugEyeWanda, and all the rest of the downtown gang. May you catch your bus, and may it see you home.)

Surviving the Streets (#15)

2009-09-18T02:04:00.004+05:30

If you haven't eaten any solid food for three days, and feel like you are going to fall down, you probably are. Sit down.

Suddenly, Champu (#35)

2009-09-06T04:04:00.001+05:30

These are the ongoing chronicles of my roommate, Chimanlal Champu. Boldly going where no man has gone before, or indeed, should ever go again.

[Champu on... mixed metaphors]

Dude, sometimes I feel like a frog.
Like a frog in a pond, you know?
And the ocean is so green!

Freedom of Speech

2009-09-05T12:11:00.004+05:30

Right, so this one's about blogging. I haven't been able to sleep for a few nights, and the insomnia pixies have been visiting me fairly regularly for the past day or two, messing with me in broad daylight at times. As a result, I find myself trawling the web night after night. Mostly I just find sweet FA, but sometimes I come across something cool, new, and useful. I'm pretty sure the people who read this blog fairly regularly (yes, all three of you) read other blogs as well, besides posting on your own. So this story might be familiar.

Its pretty damn awful to realise that what we take for granted is a privilege much prized by some, and each day is a struggle to stay connected, to stay online. Each post a subtle thumb of the nose at the establishment.

So I'm adding one blog from each country mentioned in the report to my blogroll. Right under my beautiful mugshot. Right hand side of the page, ya just can't miss it.

So get clicking. And together, we just might change something. Lets make each hit count. Vive la revolucion!

Edit : And of course, in my revolutionary zeal, I overlook the simple fact that not every blog on the intarwubs is en Anglais. This is going to be harder than I thought. 'Cos google translate..well.. sucks. But I'll be putting them up soon as I find 'em. Right, then, as you were.

Suddenly, Champu (#19)

2009-09-01T12:55:00.003+05:30

These are the ongoing chronicles of my roommate, Chimanlal Champu. Boldly going where no man has gone before, or indeed, should ever go again.

[Champu on... pregnancy]

Dude, did you ever notice how girls become fat after marriage? I think its because of sexual intercourse...

Doctor, I'm hearing the voices again...

2009-08-29T14:08:00.006+05:30

Via Wikipedia : "Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a real-world environment whose elements are supplemented with-, or augmented by computer-generated imagery. The augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in meaningful context with environmental elements. The term is believed to have been coined in 1990 by Thomas Caudell."

Proposed is an AR application that is capable of interpreting visual cues from the ‘real-world’ environment and making decisions based on the same. It will deal with vast amounts of data, collected from day-to-day life, and provide the user with meaningful information based on such data in the real-world, in real-time. This is an app intended for the system conceptualized by Pranav Mistry et. al. of MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group, details of which are available here.

The application, (which I'm calling 'Third-i'), would function as a virtual secretary, primarily concerned with notifying the user with relevant updates/reminders/information pertaining to appointments/deadlines/events of potential interest.

The system is customizable by nature, and the user is actively required to input his/her preferences into the database for optimal functionality. Based on the user’s preferences, the system designs an optimal schedule for him, (the schedule can be adjusted at the user’s discretion) and proactively issues ‘reminders’ to assure that the user adheres to it.

To illustrate, suppose you indicate your interest in live music. At a later date, you’re walking past a store, and you see a flyer for a rock concert. The imaging apparatus of the augmented reality system ‘sees’ the flyer, (i.e. captures an image of it) and scans it for relevant information (such as showtimes, dates, ticket pricing). It correlates and compares this information with your schedule for the day of the show, and queries you to gauge your interest. If you indicate your interest in attending the show, the system creates an entry in your schedule, checks online for the best prices, and makes a purchase based on your authorization.

The application could be customized to user-specification, as a permanent companion, able to issue alerts/reminders/event updates in real-time, either via e-mail, pop-up alerts or (my favourite) in the form of in-ear voice cues. A fully personalized 'avatar' for the application if you will, with the clipped tones of a butler; the sibilant voice of a beautiful woman; or even your dad, yelling at you to get out of bed and get your ass in gear. The options are limitless. And you'll never forget things like anniversaries, birthdays, and appointments again! XD

Suddenly, Champu (#56)

2009-08-29T12:53:00.010+05:30

These are the ongoing chronicles of my roommate, Chimanlal Champu. Boldly going where no man has gone before, or indeed, should ever go again.

We're at home, eating dinner, and then suddenly; Champu.

Me : So I heard Abhishek Bachchan is going to be in the Indian remake of the Hangover..
Champu : O rly? Dude that guy is not hot
Me : ..er..
Champu : Dude, they need someone who is a little hot, and mischievous..
Me : ...
Champu (thinking aloud) : Hmmm.. now who are some hot, cute looking guys...?
Me : ..!..

***

EDIT Bonus Fact!

While I'm typing the fact above :

Me : [typing]
Champu : Dude, what're you doing? [trying to look at the screen]
Me : Posting Champu Facts
Champu : Oh. [continues to watch]
Me : ..?..
Champu (frustrated that im slowing down) : Dude, type faster man! I'm waiting to see what it is ...

Them Bones

2009-08-23T15:51:00.004+05:30

I'm at Molly MaGee's. Saturday night. Johnny Cash playing to the patio, walking the line, keeping himself sane, while America hunkers down, lies and misdirection flying thick and fast in the eye of the Cold War. Somewhere in time, there's a Russian girl trying to catch my eye. Another place, another time, and I'm lighting Elena's cigarette, her eyes gleaming turqoise within the flame. Now I'm drunk and puking my miserable guts out in an alleyway somewhere in San Francisco, clutching my side because it hurts like I've lost something very important.

The stars move on and keep on going. In circles, in spirals, constellations morphing into mocking figures, leering at me, smug like only the dead can afford to be. And I'm on my back and not moving, not getting up, lost in time, lost in space, miles away.

And I'm three years ago, eight thousand miles away.

Then I'm here, here and now, but you've gone and moved away.

This is the tragedy, here in the now, even though I'm here I'm still eight thousand miles away. Two years ago and counting backwards all the while. Now its one, now its two, and three's the worst of all, 'cos I haven't even met you yet and everything is telling me you're coming in fast. The sun shines through my window one day, and the light is strange, translucent, as if filtered through your hair. But surely you must see, this isn't how it could possibly be. Because you're still one year away, and getting closer all the while, and wherever you are, you're certainly not here.

Apple-cinnamon jam, and toasted bread and melting chocolate, and the taste of your sweat in the hot summer heat of your room. And I'm seventeen months ago, eight thousand miles away. And this is here, this is now, I'm three city blocks away but you've gone away again I don't know how far or how long.

Not that it matters, 'cos my chains are learning and they're tight and they're binding and they keep me still. Tied to two years ago. So many miles away.

When are you coming home? Not that it matters, I'm not really here, this isn't me, I'm just a pretender, shadow in time where's my light? Even moths know that they will burn. Me, I'm just a passenger, trapped in a temporal Moebius strip.

A smell, a taste, a fragment of memory, and I'm gone.

Quick, get me a Jefferson Airplane!

2009-08-19T14:16:00.004+05:30

Silence and sleep, like fields of amaranth lie

2009-05-18T12:14:00.014+05:30

A shadow slips through the night, flitting across the street. In the half-light of the waning moon, the figure is barely discernible, but we can see that it is a tall, man-shaped thing. The stranger seems to hesitate for a moment, as if unsure of whether to go down Main, and then turns left down Beale street. He reaches the riverside, and climbs over the embankment, wading into the shallows.

***

The sun beats down about his head and shoulders. Sweat mixes thickly with white face-paint, and clots into his synophrys. His lips feel chapped and thick under the crimson lipstick smeared over his mouth. Feet hurting, the slap slap slap of his oversized shoes on the pavement becomes a mantra. He marches on. Ti-i-i-me [slap] is on [slosh]my [slap] side…[slosh] yes [slap] it is [slap-slosh]. The gasoline sloshes in its jerry can, happily syncopating the rhythm of his shoes.

***

The night is young. He runs a hand over his scalp, feeling the smoothness of it. It pleases him. He heads down towards the waterfront, walking briskly down Folsom. He moves with a certain confidence, sure of where he is going, and exactly how fast he wants to get there. Striding across Spear street, he looks up at the bay bridge looming overhead, like a leviathan in the fog. It pleases him.

***

The sun. Warm. Love the heat.

***

He stops in the middle of the square. People are milling around, busy with their daily routines. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a) a book of matches b) a piece of green chalk c) a feather.
Nobody spares more than a second glance at the clown in the polyester suit standing in the middle of the square. Not even when the clown plucks a feather out of the air and draws a green circle on the ground, around himself, precisely 4.5 feet from the instep of each flappy foot.

***

A vulpine smile reveals crooked canines, flashing in the moonlight. As if competing with his teeth, his knife glints in the dark too, for a brief instant, before the blade disappears into the woman's entrails, like a thaumaturgist's trick. Now you see it, now you don’t.

***

The gasoline soaks right through his suit. Passerby halt in their tracks and stare at him, stupefied. He glances back morosely, an exaggerated expression of pure longing on his face. Then he sets himself on fire.

***

Open sky. Taste of the sea on the wanton wind. The smell of her perfume, carried on a breeze.

***

A single drop of blood drips off his earring and onto the toe of his shoe. His face smeared with gore, he chokes back the thick, sickly sweet taste of menstrual blood, and a howl gurgles its way out of his throat. Echoing into the night, he announces his presence to the audient void.

***

I am a bird of prey. Your poets and visionaries write odes to me, and what I represent. My eye sees all of creation, and all of creation fears my gaze.

***

The harbour is silent, the world asleep. A body floats down Wolf Creek, drowned in whiskey, or river slime, or both. A whore leans against a doorway and watches the shadowy figure make his way up over the embankment, onto mud island. The light from the tip of her cigarette is twice-reflected in the blue of her eyes. And behind the wall of sleep, all is silence, silence.

Life is not a box of chocolates.

2009-05-11T14:27:00.004+05:30

Unless some of the chocolates are poisoned, some have worms burrowing into the nougat-y bits, and some are actually just attractively packaged ca-ca.

Life is a constant struggle to actuate our own reality. Our consensual reality du jour. We strive and struggle to survive, most of the time making it through the days like sheep, eyes and feet fixed firmly on the ground, wallowing in the banality of it all without even realising it. Leading the life of man, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".

But at night, when we sleep, we can dream. In that realm, gravity holds no dominion. When we are in the space between, we can let go of everything, and learn to fly. Dreams are our doorway into the infinite possibilities of the multiverse, the place where ideas come from. Ideas can be fragile things, ephemeral and fleeting, but once we embrace them, give them room to take root and grow in the fields of our mind, they can lead us to the very edge of the horizon. Bringing an idea into the real world is akin to venturing beyond that edge, breaking from convention and pushing the limits of our horizons.

The realisation of an idea is a beautiful moment. Quite literally, entire worlds turn in the balance, in that terrifyingly sublime interregnum. What was once in the future, is now here in this reality. Hence, via corollary, as corny as it may sound, the future is here.

And when the true future hits, it causes shockwaves to ripple through the very fabric of time and space.
The advent of a true future is an event of revolutionary proportions, by the very nature of its existence. Sometimes the revolution is small, affecting significant yet minimal change. And sometimes the magnitude of the idea causes a revolution of such impressive proportions, it has the potential to become the new zeitgeist.

This is after all, what the history of our species teaches us. This cyclical change is the basic principle, the very politics of our evolution. A revolution, then the slow rise to equilibrium, followed by a brief period of stability before decaying into stagnation, and then..another revolution. Another revolution... like the wheel.

And sometimes.. Just sometimes, perhaps only once more.. before we evolve ourselves right off this plane of existence.. there comes an idea, an image, a neo-archetype of such absolute brilliance… its like the gnosis of fire.

So get up off your arse, and go make something. Act out an idea, paint a portrait, write a book, create an equation, compose a song, start a fucking revolution, i don't care what you do. Just light the fuse and run like crazy. Immanentize the goddamn eschaton. Go!

Radio Mash Up Mini Mix : Tales from the Desolate, Lonely, Soul-Crushing Parts of Rev. Joshi's Travelling Salvation Show

2009-03-03T15:27:00.005+05:30

Yesterday, I discovered that the second hand computer speakers I picked up at the flea market have unshielded wiring, which means they can pick up radio signals. I unplug the lead, and a flood of sound erupts. At night, like barely heard snatches and whispers of conversation from another room, sibilant and strangely soothing. This morning, a Chinese news radio station intermingled with the signal from a frequency playing Chicano holiday music. A glorious cacophony that permeates the air, and envelops me in its warmth. Blissful, happy, I sink back into the bright red couch, and close my eyes. Through some strange twist of karma, though I'm asleep, I can still hear the radio play. A monotonous, droning voice is reciting a string of numbers. Could it be? After all these months, a transmission from the dreamlands? I strain to listen, and manage to make out the following curious lines, amidst the static.

The transmission ends, and a weird noise, like a deranged monkey attempting to violently copulate with a theremin, takes its place. I wake up, discomfited and unconcerted, my forehead covered in sweat, and my lungs on fire.

What does it all mean? WHO is responsible for these messages!

Successfully coping with the natural beauty of infidelity

2009-02-11T13:22:00.003+05:30

I know you're fucking someone else.

... and i dont care.

Bukkake for the misanthropic psychonaut soul.

2008-12-02T06:05:00.005+05:30

This is the winter of our discontent. At times, snow falls, and at times, darkness. How much longer do i seek you, o proud and taciturn, house by house, door to door? A swarm of maggots for your corpse. How much longer, corner to corner, street by street? I dont care if you dont, I wont say it if you wont say it first, I advance to attack, your terrible armies with banners, you implacable cruel beast, I cherish that coldness which makes you even more beautiful, ha doo doo doo shaking like milk turning over blue. lets go to bed. Tahir ul maulvi had it pegged just right. So, to begin.

Strapped in, launching hyperstitial metatemporal probes, beta stage boosters at maximum thrust, guidance is internal, leaving terraspheric field in t minus eleven, ten, nine, nine, nine, eight, eleven, eleven is what it was like to see the face of my own stability, wearing shadows, the reflection of my own reflection distorted and eleven, nine, eight, seven, moving me with a sound, opening me within a gesture, eleven, holding a light, lead me through each gentle step, step by step, by inch by loaded memory, thine oils, the chief spices spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, til one and one are one, eleven im heading back home, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, four, four, four-ty six and two, eleven, eleven, ignition sequence starts, six five, four, three, two, one, supernaut!

(If i were a cinnamon peeler I would ride your bed and leave the yellow bark dust on your pillow; but I being poor have only my dreams, tread softly)

Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love. A book of verses underneath the bough, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread- and thou beside me singing in the wilderness. In the cities, a Lovecraftian nightmare, all steel and concrete and ineffable horror, angles that bend and warp the mind which dares conceive of their reality. But nature does not use steel. Or sharp edges. Abandoning the established paradigm of construction, we must learn to recognize the patterns in the dust, in the death throes of every moth in every flame. Tracing the spirals of the moth smoke, we are confronted with eternity.
It is in our nature to seek out the unknown, to spiral out, to ascend and evolve. Past and present, we are all made of stars. Quod sum eris, we are all in this together now. As below so above. And beyond. Restoring sight to the blind watchmaker, we must be the eyes of God, not dead but dreaming, like Cthulhu who sleeps dreaming in R'lyeh. I'a! I'a! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. The goat with a thousand young waits below, and the great hunter, above. For us it is to seek beyond.

N=R*fp*ne * Fl*fi* Tc*L

And what is life? The criteria by which we judge our surroundings must be flexible, open to change. Without change, we stagnate, rot, and decay. The Earth heaves across the heavens, marking time, the grim meathook descending ever closer, swinging over all the rot and spoilage. As we pile it ever higher and deeper, we make a leprous, desperate grab at the high blue vault of the heavens, begging for a purge, a great upheaval of the continents, the cities, the filth. Im praying for rain. A black hole sun to wash it all away, all of the everything. We must needs the cleansing waters. There are no inbound messiahs like '. (int)$value . "' and c.categories_id = cd.categories_id 君達の基地は、全てCATSがいただいた。Prep launch codes u7#
and cd.language_id='" . (int)$languages_id ."' order by sort_order, cd.categories_name D4#@ 这是bukkake录影
lock cmpxchg8b eax not a typewriter p0d b4y 9or al p;es RET o9 pod bay doors HAL! そろそろ終わりだろう ed_func_nullll$#% 42 t4k33 0f ev z0g gIz 點擊這裡得到瑞克滾動 ytmn.d.

MANDALA#0: Possible thermal failure (MANDALA on fire ?)

Still Right Here.

2008-09-13T10:29:00.004+05:30

Hello meat puppets. Many a moon has passed since I posted here. Much of personal import has happened. I got a bachelor's degree, got a job, got into a good graduate program, left the job, left my country, had someone leave me, and had someone find me, if only for a short short while. But its been a lifetime's worth of love. And heartbreak. And learning. I'm tempted to break this post into several shorter posts, maybe I should have posted here more. But then again, if I hadn't made the mistakes I made then it wouldn’t be me sitting here typing this out (with sincere apologies to Sam Lake). And I cant keep running away from myself. Time to pay the piper and all that guff, ess? Be seeing you around.

“Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance.”

Solitary Man.

2008-09-13T07:28:00.002+05:30

This isnt a blog post. Its a cop-out. Go read something else.

Pwn4g3

2008-06-03T17:16:00.004+05:30

She pwns me.

Like Astarte, Inanna, and Kali rolled into one.

I am dumbstruck, shut up and sat down by her.
She has so many facets, so many many little idiosyncrasies and details, so many beautiful ways to capture the light and simply revel in it, so much that Im lost before I can even begin to comprehend her.
When she dances, she doesn't care who's watching.
She's having fun, she's in her element, she's in the groove, all up in the zone and she dont care.
And its awesome.
I dont even want to keep up.
Im happy to just watch her move.
She strikes me stupid.
She's the kind of girl I'd walk down three miles of bad road to get to.
Eight thousand miles, if it comes to that.
'Cos she's my little china girl.
My crush with eyeliner.
The yin to my yang.
The one I'd sail my ships around.
My best friend.

And she's not perfect, no.
But she's so good she shuts me up.
Pwn4ge.

Great Balls of Fire!

2008-05-09T10:32:00.005+05:30

I am busy now. Semi-intelligible post with clever insight into my complicated creative processes to follow. soon. Meanwhile, this news story precipitated a mad rush to my workstation, so I could post a link to my blog, and illuminate you. Seriously. This could be the next big breakthrough for global warming. And to think the answer to global warming was literally right there in front of us. Truly, this is joyous news for most women (and some unfortunate men) everywhere. OMFGLOLCATS!!~

In the future, there wil be robots.

2008-04-26T14:54:00.003+05:30

So I'm surfing the net the other day, and I'm reading up on Ray Kurzweil and transhumanism and Kevin Warwick and awesome cool rad stuff like that right, and I'm thinking how cool it's gonna be in the future. The coming singularity and how its going to transform the very definition of what it means to be human. Powerful supercomputing devices seamlessly integrating with your mind, forming a separate 'intelligent' neural network that can interface with the myriad digital devices planted across the environment, exchanging information at hyper-real speeds, and putting us more in touch with our surroundings then we ever thought possible. Awesome. I could go on and on about it until I eventually hyperventilate and choke myself to death so instead i thought I'd blog about it, and get all the hoo ha out of my system. So I'm typing and googling away to glory, when I notice this article about something called a 'Grim Meathook Future'. Now the grim meathook future is a pretty scary concept. But what's really quite ironic, to me, as an Indian, is the fact that the global community is only now waking up to this very real state of affairs. Grim meathook future? How's about the very real, very scary, grim meathook PRESENT being inflicted upon more than half the world's population? Forget about the idiots in Israel and Palestine and the fucking morons in Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting over land and oil, what about the millions fighting for a share of food and basic human amenities in places like Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Kashmir, Bihar, Assam, Tibet, Myanmar, North Korea, East Timor, Kosovo, fuck it, just hit google earth and pick a random spot on the globe. Its the way we are now. We're living your "future" dammit! And I'm reading all these righteous, 'aware', worried essays about the impending 'grim meathook future' and I have the irresistible urge to point and go 'ha ha' like Nelson on the Simpsons.

Soul-consumingly supermassive amounts of FAIL

2008-04-09T09:21:00.002+05:30

In the field of human relationships, I have the maturity, patience and know-how of a 2 year old autoerotic chimp. I am a fucking moron. And an idiot. After the latest fiasco, my ego is the equivalent of a priceless ninth century Ming vase in a three stooges movie. For those of you who havent been lucky enough to ever see a three stooges movie, a) go watch one now, they're totally worth it and b) ess ess I mean its fragile. Delusions of happiness, anyone? Igor! Fetch me my time machine! No such thing you say? Oh well, bring me a quart of tequila, a pound of turkish hashish, and a welding torch. Im going to MAKE one.

Look on my sweaty bread, ye mighty, and despair.

2008-03-30T11:46:00.005+05:30

No matter where you live or what you do, eventually, the dust gets in. The dust is everywhere, always trying to reclaim it all. It’s a constant reminder of mortality, of the fact that no matter how advanced the human race thinks it is, we're all still bound to the dust of this planet, the stuff of our origin. The gnostics knew this, they called it the qellipot, meaning the inherent impurity of all that is. The great tragedy of mass and solidity. Pure energy, the breath of the unbeheld, tainted by the filth of matter, the common dross of the world. The authors of the bible, quick to appropriate this fundamental of esoteric philosophy, reshaped it as "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.".

Indeed, from dust we came, and to dust shall we all return. But in the meantime, is it too much to ask for some respite from all this goddamned dust in my room!? I sweep, and I clean, and I wipe and still the damn stuff gets in! Some days I feel like Howard Hughes must have felt, shutting himself off from the outside world, hiding from his life, obsessively and compulsively sanitizing his room, peeing into empty milk bottles… Okay, scratch that last bit..but you get the gist of it. This morning, I could barely see the keys on the laptop for all the dust coating it!..and now I've lost my train of thought..

Oh fuck it all, I'm locked up in here writing a fucking ode to dust, and there's a ton of stuff I should be doing instead. What a waste of a perfectly good life. And then it hits me, why I started writing this piece of crap in the first place.. I saw my brand new laptop all covered up with dust, and I realized what a perfect fucking metaphor it was for my life. Like I have all these awesome tools, and skills, and instead of using them and pushing them to their limits, I'm just sitting around, wasting time, wasting breath, allowing the dust to lay claim to it all.

And when its all finally gone, I can sit on my throne of dust, and say, "Call me Ozymandias; king of kings".

Notes From the Lunatic Fringe

2008-01-27T21:54:00.000+05:30

I predict that in the near future, perhaps as soon as 2012, there will be an established human presence on the moon. And I predict that it will be the result of a joint indo-chinese lunar mission. Given the core importance of the moon in chinese mythology, as in Indian occultism, it wont be any surprise if the first people to actually try and establish a base on the moon are the Chinks and the Brownies. Yup. That's right, there's gonna be paan stains on the Mare Tranquillitatis, and chinese lanterns strung along the Montes Taurus. And there aint nothing you can do about it.

Being an unemployed bigot, I tend to have a lot of free time, and I use this time to surf the internet for news, comics, porn, dvd rips of movies, porn, porn, and err.. more porn.

Ahem. Yes. Well. To change the topic, here are some interesting news items from way back when (yes, 2004 is now officially "way back when". Face it buddy, you're just NOT getting younger.)

Back in 2004, the ironically named Sun Laiyan, head of the chinese space program talked about their plans for a moon mission and then just a few months ago, shazam!

Meanwhile, the Indians, still wrapped up in the whole colonial-era "truly, us brown folks are white man's burdens yes yes i am apu god save the queen hrundi v bakshi pleased to meet you thank you come again" fugue, are busy kissing american arse. But at least we're getting there.

Not to be left behind, the japs are already up there, sending back breathtaking high def images and videos such as this one.

A view of the earth from lunar orbit. Mag-fucking-nificent. Of course, it goes without saying that while we watch these videos, those sneaky buggers are planting mutant shinobi dragon ninjas all OVER the dark side of the moon.. Feh.

The message is clear, however. Those crazy Americans can stay earthbound and fight all the wars they want. We've got tickets to ride, and baby we dont care. Bring on the Rutles!!! :D

So what does all this boil down to? How is a human presence on the moon going to benefit ME, you ask. Well, to be perfectly honest with you, i could care less about sending men to the moon. Or anywhere else. I just wanted to share this hilarious little image with everyone.

Harold and Kumar go to . . . the moon.

Tales from the Dreamlands. Part One. ....Maybe.

2007-11-18T18:42:00.000+05:30

The other night, I fall asleep, and when i wake up, Im back in the dream city of Carathis. Fuckbunnies. I have no happy memories of this place. I suppose trade was improving, and the city seemed to have prospered from it since the last time I was here. Certainly, the streets looked cleaner, though they were still lined with merchants selling their wares on either side, said wares copious in their variety and quantity, and said streets being thronged by an equally dizzying multitude of people. Note that i use the term 'people' in a very loose manner, blanketing sentient and uh, not-so-sentient organisms of every conceivable and inconceivable size, shape and form. But no matter what form life may take, some things are common to us all. As i was soon to find.

I must have found my way into a local dive, because the next thing i know, im sitting at this dingy bar, with a draught of Grok in my hand. Grok is kind of like beer. If your idea of beer is boiled and tri-filtered Yak urine. So Im sitting at the bar, minding my own business, wondering how on Earth to get back to..err..Earth, when there's a loud "slam!" and something heavy hits the floor. Obviously, I assume its the end of the world, and tipping my stool backward, fall to the floor, and cower under the bar, gripping my mug of Grok like a weapon (from which I didnt spill a drop, im proud to say). But instead of Yahweh's vengeance, what i find on the floor is a Lemurian policeman. Now Lemurians are legendary when it comes to drinking, and its something of a Lemurian tradition to be a cop. Kind of like the Irish, actually. Hmm..i wonder if there's something there..but I digress. Back to the bar. So im under the bar, and this Lemurian is under the bar, and it seems like he was the chap responsible for the "slam" i heard, having had one too many draughts of Grok, which is quite unusual, for a Lemurian. (Not the drinking, the falling after the drinking bit. There's no such phrase as "..too much to drink.." in any self respecting Lemurian's phrasebook) And he's wearing a policeman's uniform. So i do what any sane, honourable man would do in my place. I rifle the bastard's pockets for money. I find a dead fish, a rubber band, and some loose change. No money. Fuckin' coppers, cheap son of a bitch must be running a tab, i think. Then i see this piece of paper he's clutching in his hand, and i proceed to pry it from his cold, sozzled fingers. Nobody's stopping me from doing all of this, by the way, and this is quite common in any city of the dreamlands. They'd be doing the same to me, if I were to pass out from too much Grok. But i dont want to push my luck, and having recovered the scrap, i drop a coin onto the counter, and stumble on out of the joint.

The night air is refreshing, and I can feel my head clear up. So i fumble in my jacket for a cancer stick, light it up, and inhale, till i can feel my head getting fuzzy again. Better. I move towards the mouth of the alley, and just there is a broken streetlight, that i hope will cast enough of a glow to make out what's written on the scrap of paper. The paper is carefully folded, three times, and written on it, in an even, steady hand, is a letter ...

Ennui and Mild Aversion in Mumbai - Uno

2007-09-10T19:52:00.000+05:30

It was a dark and stormy night. It was 11 in the morning. It was 20 years into the future. It was the LOST island. I cant remember now. Right, lets take it from the top.

It was 7 in the morning when my carcass was thrown out of the bus. I dusted m'self off, and squinted against the sun. I was under a great big flyover. A hulking, unbelievable thing, looming over the landscape like some ominous leviathan, antediluvian and dangerous. Hackles were duly raised. The place was deserted. Fucking empty. A signboard stood on the shoulder of the road, pristine, white. An obscenity against nature. "Welcome to Vashi" it proclaimed. I bared my teeth at it. This was no time for inanities. I felt like a cat had shat on my brain, and then wiped its arse on my tongue. I crawled into a ditch, tugging at my knapsack, and curled up, foetal. I was never a morning person.

Flash cut to a seedy hotel somewhere in Bombay. Its 11 am. The autowallah i've hired has brought me to the "Hotel Krishna : Working toilets, comfortable beds, TV service". That's the name of the place. The whole chimichanga. I stagger into the reception area, consisting of a large desk crammed into the corridor of the third floor. The first and second floors of the building house offices, a dentist, and a veterinarian, in that order. Im still wondering whether "TV" service is short for television or transvestite, (knowing Bombay, its probably both) when I notice the cabron at the desk. Short, greasy, Gujarati gentleman. (In India, where you come from is always an adjective, simultaneously insulting and descriptive, in equal measure) He pushes the register towards me, and I sign the first name that comes to mind. Spartacus Kousis. Yes, that's right. I'm Spartacus! He yawns, hands me a key, room number 11, and slumps back in his chair.

The room is relatively clean, the rats seem amicable enough, and the cockroaches have their turf safely in one corner, under the air conditioner. Which doesnt work. I dont need it anyway, Bombay is humid, and the ceiling fan works just fine. There are no trannies in evidence, but I check the attached loo, just in case. You can never be too sure about these things. I hang up my jacket on the lone chair, which looks like it will collapse under the weight of the leather, and switch on the television. Its "Fear and Loathing.." on some local tv station. Its a fine movie so I lie down on the bed. I get up off the bed. My back feels like its being needled. Repeatedly. I look at the bed, and i can see a fresh bloodstain. This is not good. Had I been stabbed sometime in the night? Was it even my blood? I put a hand to my back, where it hurts, and yes, it's my blood all right. But very little. On screen, Johnny Depp has just consumed some adrenochrome, and he says the weasels are closing in. He's looking right at me when he says this. I lock the door. This is scary shit. I dont want any weasels in my room. Reptiles arent welcome either.

I get to the loo, and take my shirt off. I twist my head around to look at my back in the mirror. There's a patch of dark blood on my back. Down from the middle of my back to my waist. I feel like the ferrets are closing in on the weasels. And I can feel their beady eyes. Fuckers. Damn those ferrets. I grab a towel, wet it, and wipe at my back. The blood comes off, but the dark patch stays. Those bastard ferrets are getting closer. It feels like they're clawing at my throat, which has gone dry. What the fuck IS this on my back? I take another towel from the rack near the washbasin, this is the small towel you're supposed to wipe your hands with. I wet this one too, and swipe it over the stain. All the blood is gone now. Some of the black 'stain' wipes off with it. The ferrets are fornicating with the weasels now. They're screeching and clawing and there's the smell of blood in the air. I can taste iron, and bile, at the back of my throat. I literally rub my eyes and stare at the mirror for some time. Then I wash my face, wipe my back down with some toilet paper (both towels are bloody and useless at this point) and head back into the room. I rummage in my bag for my pipe, fill the bowl with the last of my stash, and light up. Its time to reflect.

Meanwhile, Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo are racing down a runway, chasing a plane. The weasels must be after them, hell for leather. I cant follow whats happening on screen. I cant remember what happened last night, before I boarded that bus. The ferrets must have caught up with me after all, i guess, 'cos apparently i have a great big conchetumare of a tattoo on my back. And it wasnt there yesterday. And the fucker is still bleeding.

I hate Bombay already.

Post Last

2007-09-08T20:13:00.000+05:30

[The deadline for the headline is the breadline]

This is the beginning of the end.
The way the world ends.
Bang, bang, whimper, snuff.

For those of you just joining us, Good Evening!
Please leave your shoes, sanity, guns, knives, explosives, nagging ex's, old grudges, new grudges, communicable diseases, 'secret' diseases, hypothetical diseases, experimental new pharmaceuticals, experimental old pharmaceuticals, stolen property, women and children, sympathy, apathy, annoying drug habits etc. at the door, and join us. Join in. Read. Dont read. Comment on the posts. Click on the banner ads. You get the drift?

Let me tell you exactly what to do, puppets. Im not plagiarising anything here, so go listen to some TooL now, the first EP, and pause at the bit where he goes "choices always were la la da dah.." Rinse. Repeat.

That's what this is about. Or not. Im not telling.

That's it for the first post. Stay tuned for the next one. Or dont. Or just go fuck yourselves. I could care less, you brain dead capitalist zombie scum. Feh.

I hate it here.